I welcome the hon. Lady’s intervention. She makes a powerful point. That must, of course, be right. In the same way that it was right to condemn those regimes and that evil, it is right to do so now.
The list of countries that continue to foster these repressive regimes is much longer than the list that has been read out this evening. There are still countries all around the world that have these regimes. We have not talked at all about Russia and the despicable link that President Putin made recently between homosexuality and paedophilia, and the way in which gay people in Russia are being brutalised while the authorities turn a blind eye. The Channel 4 “Dispatches” programme made a powerful documentary in February which showed quite horrific scenes of young people being physically assaulted by gangs on the streets and the police merely turning a blind eye.
Do not let us make the mistake of thinking that this is just Uganda, or just Nigeria, and a minority of countries. I regret that it is not. This is a tale of two worlds. This House of Commons knows which world we belong to and which side we belong to, and we should not be afraid to stand up and say, “Yes, we too made these mistakes. We too once had this kind of legislation.” We had legislation in the not so distant past that was repressive of gay people, and we learnt from those mistakes. We admit that we got things wrong and we urge others to understand the fundamental importance of these universal human values and why it is wrong for them, too, to discriminate against minorities, including gay people.
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